Not Just A Pretty Face

Chapter One

For the rest of my life, when I am alone, I will always think over these moments.  How everything was normal – safe, secure, perfect – and then, not normal.

   I saw the sun go to sleep and the stars come for their watch.  It was a night that he would have liked, if he were here.  Cloudless.  Shining.  Beautiful.  But I know I’m to blame for the reason he’s not.  And I can see it in myself, now, when I look in the mirror.  I’m not who I used to be.

                                                                  ✤✤✤

“Good morning, sweetheart.”

   The voice drifted through the ether.  The familiar voice lifted me from my slumber and warmed my heart, though I still didn't want to get up as it instructed. “Wake up!  Come on, baby girl.”  I opened one eye to see my mum leaning over me.  I smiled when I saw her face.  I hoped I’d look like that when I was older; dark, shiny locks, deep brown eyes – so deep you could swim in them – and not looking a day over thirty-five, even though she was approaching twenty years older than that.  But I knew my choices would dictate how I went, and she had only made good ones.

    “Why?” I asked as she tried to coax me gently, taking my arm from under my sheet and starting to tug.

    She splayed her hands under her backside to smooth her dress before sitting on my mattress, just by my leg.  “Because,” she began, before a large smile spread across her features, “Olive had her baby!”  My eyes widened now; I propped myself up on my elbow to look at her.  “Come on!  Let’s go see if she’s as cute as they say!”

   My excitement dwindled then, and I couldn’t help but laugh at my mum.  “Honestly, mumma, you get excited over the most trivial things,” I said, slowly swinging my legs over in the process of speaking to stand them on the floor.  “She looks the same as any other baby.  Let’s wait and visit when she’s four, when she’s Different.  Then I’ll be impressed.”

   “Oh, darling, it doesn’t always happen that way,” mum said, nudging me softly with her side.  “You started looking Different when you were only one year old.”

   “Okay, so let’s wait a year.”

   Mum gave me a smile that looked like a mix of exhaustion and ever so slight amusement.  “Come on, Dylan, please?” she asked.  I was surprised to hear the begging note in her voice; she really wanted to press this.

   I let my brown eyes – almost replicas of my mum’s own, but without the blue ring around them as she had – pass over her.  I could really tell I was not about to win this argument, and honestly, the adorable look that came over my mum right now was wavering my resolve.  She always did that; put on her small smile, brightened her eyes, and stared at me until I gave in.

   But honestly, how could I refuse someone as beautiful – as righteous – as her?

   “All right,” I relented.  “Let me shower, change and we’ll go.”

   “Great.”  Mum squeezed my hand, and gave me a good morning hug, before getting up and walking off in her elegant manner.  “Come downstairs in twenty minutes and we’ll leave.”

                                                                  ✤✤✤

I don’t know what it was, but I felt comfortable in hospitals when I wasn’t the one in them.  If something went wrong all of a sudden, or I felt ill, there was a wealth of doctors on call to make sure I was okay.  So the minute we stepped into the ward, I felt I could get sick and not worry about it.